ACSAD and ESCWA / a joint training course in Baghdad
Today, under the patronage of His Excellency, the Iraqi Minister of Agriculture, Dr Muhammed Kareem Al Khafaji, and in the presence of the Director-General of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Drylands, Dr Nasr Edin Obaid; a training course has started in Baghdad on “Irrigation Management by using the mathematical modelling” conducted by the Arab Center ACSAD in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia ESCWA. This course focuses on calculating metered water, scheduling irrigation, and applying deficit irrigation.
During the course opening, Dr Nasr Edin Obaid said that this course came as a completion for the cooperation between ACSAD and the Iraqi Minister of Agriculture that had spanned over several years, during which many pilot projects had been implemented, and a result of signing the technical cooperation agreement for 2021 – 2022 to develop and grow this cooperation between the two sides in the various common areas. It is the second training course implemented by ACSAD in Iraq during the last two weeks. ACSAD had implemented a few days ago, in partnership with the United Nations for Food and Agriculture FAO, a training course on calculating the water productivity and the climatic change impacts on the crops. It was attended by 18 trainees from the two Iraqi Ministries of Agriculture and Water Resources.
His Excellency, Dr Obaid, clarified that the course aimed to find scientific and practical successful solutions helping in facing the main challenges. It faced an urgent issue among many others in the Arab region, which is water, on which the pressures are expected to increase in the future, especially concerning accelerated population growth and climate change impacts.
ACSAD’s General Director also said: “ the climate changes are sweeping our region dramatically. Foremost among them, the drought waves we are suffering from nowadays, which would reduce the cultivated lands, whether they are rainfed or irrigated, in addition, to threaten the food security, and high-cost of food gab which is already high. It is worth mentioning the dangerous water-deficient facing both Syria and Iraq in the late years due to the unprecedented decline of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers; it has become impossible to pump the water of the rivers towards the irrigation-based agricultural projects in the two countries.
His Excellency confirmed the Arab Center ACSAD’s willingness since its establishment to do its strategic tasks sincerely and technically, especially regarding intensifying the efforts to reach the common Arab developmental goals, to which the Arab strategy of water security in the Arab region confirmed on, to face the futuristic challenges and requirements of Sustainable Development’s executive plan (2021 – 2022.)
At the end of his speech, Dr Obaid explained that ACSAD’s experts presented concentratedly extensive theoretical and practical explanations on the importance of Irrigation Management and the necessity to improve it, increase the water productivity by the modern methods, one of which the mathematical model (AquaCrop). It is a technical tool that helps the partners in the course to contribute to addressing a significant issue of water’s, to which many developmental activities related; especially the socio-economic ones, to which achieving many sustainable development goals related to, in particular, the second goal relevant to eliminate hunger, the sixth goal relevant to providing water, and the thirteenth goal relevant to climatical work and improving the income of the domestic inhabitants in the countryside.
